Bram van Velde

Art Brokerage: Bram van Velde Dutch Artist: b. 1895-1981. Bram (Abraham Gerardus) van Velde was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction. He is often seen as member of the School of Paris but his work resides somewhere between expressionism and surrealism, and evolved in the 1960s into an expressive abstract art. His paintings from the 1950s are similar to the contemporary work of Matisse, Picasso and the abstract expressionist Adolph Gottlieb. In 1939, van Velde came upon his own painting style while working in a large-format with gouache. His first solo exhibition opened March 21, 1946 in Paris in the "Galerie Mai" with 25 canvases, nearly all of his existing works, but the show was a failure. In 1947, van Velde signed a contract with the Galerie Maeght in Paris, and in 1948 he showed his work in the Kootz gallery in New York, but this was also a commercial failure, despite a good review by Willem de Kooning. In 1958, Franz Meyer organized the first museum exposition of Bram van Velde, a retrospective at the Kunsthalle of Bern. Starting in 1961, van Velde began to achieve a certain critical success. Jean-Michel Meurice made a documentary film about the artist. Van Velde shuttled between Paris and Geneva, and in 1967 he moved to the latter. In 1957 Van Velde makes his first lithografy, and with the help of Jaques Putman from then he starts to make long series of lithografies in the next years. In 1962, 1964 and 1968 Van velde had exhibitions in the United States organized by gallery Knoedler. In 1968 the art critic can appreciate him as 'an important abstract expressionist painter with an independent vision'. . After 1970, van Velde travels a lot to visit his own expositions in Poland, Iceland, Italy and Norway, Brussels, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Rome. In 1964, he was named "chevalier" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Netherlands awarded him the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1969. In 1973, he painted at La Chapelle-sur-Carouge several large gouaches which are seen as the last "savage" appearance of colour in his work. Bram van Velde died December 28, 1981 in Grimaud (near Arles), and is buried there. Listings wanted.